New services, deals
China Southern Airlines
China Southern Airlines said its code-sharing partnership with American Airlines (AA) would be effective from Thursday, giving passengers traveling with the world’s two biggest air travel markets more choices.
According to the partnership, passengers of China Southern may book seats on connecting AA flights from Los Angeles to Houston, Chicago, Philadelphia, Charlotte or Phoenix, or from San Francisco to Dallas or Phoenix.
Also, AA passengers may connect by China Southern flights to Chinese cities such as Guangzhou in South China’s Guangdong Province, Shenyang and Dalian in Northeast China’s Liaoning Province and Changsha in Central China’s Hunan Province via Beijing.
Tickets will be available on China Southern’s official website and authorized third-party ticketing platforms.
American Airlines
American Airlines (AA) and Fliggy, a travel service platform of Alibaba Group Holding, announced on Tuesday that they have formed a strategic partnership to provide travelers in China the ability to directly purchase AA’s services and products. Also, eligible Fliggy loyalty program members will now be able to enjoy select elite status benefits of the AAdvantage program.
The companies announced that Fliggy’s eligible F1 members will receive preferred boarding, F2 members will enjoy certain benefits such as complimentary preferred seats while F3 members will gain privileges such as complimentary extra main cabin space and preferred seat allocation.
Fliggy had a reach of 549 million active monthly mobile users across Alibaba’s Chinese retail marketplaces as of September 2017. Boeing Boeing and Adient on Tuesday announced the formation of Adient Aerospace, a joint venture that will develop, manufacture and sell a portfolio of seating products to airlines and aircraft leasing companies. The seats will be available for installation on new airplanes and as retrofit configurations for aircraft produced by Boeing and other commercial airplane manufacturers.
Adient Aerospace’s operational headquarters, technology center and initial production plant will be located in Kaiserslautern, Germany, near Frankfurt. The joint venture’s initial customer service center will be based in Seattle, Washington. Aftermarket distribution of Adient Aerospace’s spare parts will be performed exclusively through Aviall, a wholly owned subsidiary of Boeing.